McCoy Tyner: Bach and Mozart - they were the jazz cats of their day
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/05/2008
Arguably the greatest jazz pianist alive, McCoy Tyner is about to start a tour of the UK. He talks to Peter Culshaw
Jazz pianist McCoy Tyner is discussing the concept of cool in his favourite Starbucks, close to his apartment in midtown Manhattan.
The greatest jazz pianist alive: McCoy Tyner
"There's a type of cool that is very superficial, narcissistic. Then there's a deeper cool, about accepting who you are, and keeping a kind of balance no matter what happens." Miles Davis, he suggests, had a little too much of the former - Tyner's ideal is Duke Ellington "The man had true elegance in how he presented himself and his music".
Tyner is arguably the greatest jazz pianist alive, and like Ellington has a rare elegance about him. He is dressed smartly in a suit and softly spoken to the point that he speaks in barely more than a whisper - so much so that in the clatter of the coffee shop it's sometimes hard to hear what he has to say. "Well, no-one ever called me a loud mouth", he laughs when I ask to sit right next to him.
His latest album, entitled Quartet, has him collaborating with revered tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, who will be accompanying him on his current UK tour, which begins this Monday, May 26, at the Bath festival. The album features reworkings of some his best known numbers like "For All We Know", the graceful "Search For Peace" and the upbeat "Blues On the Corner" from the 1967 album that launched his solo career, The Real McCoy.
The album is "maybe my 80th, I'm really not sure," says Tyner. It's full of colour and vigour with his trademark percussive piano style, with its emphatic, attacking bass and refined, virtuosic right hand. While full of energy, the album shows that Tyner, now 71, is still at the top of his game.
If it doesn't sound desperately original, that's because he has so many imitators: "I do listen to discs and think the piano sounds like me, and I'm honoured by that. But I wanted to find myself musically. The great guys I admired growing up always sounded like themselves and no-one else."
The return to a quartet line-up recalls what remains McCoy Tyner's most celebrated period in the early 60s as a member of John Coltrane's quartet. The band recorded such classics as A Love Supreme and My Favourite Things. Tyner both shaped the music and was influenced by Coltrane "actually the thing that really impressed me about John was his diligence, he was always practising, never satisfied. He knew what he wanted, even if he didn't always know how to get there. He was like a scientist in a laboratory. He was also like a big brother to me. I was a very lucky guy to know him."
After leaving Coltrane's band in 1965 when Coltrane went increasingly avant-garde, Tyner had a couple of years in the wilderness "I learnt some survival skills - but it was meant to be. I needed some time to find my voice." Since then, while he has experimented with different sized bands and different sounds, including playing the harpsichord and the Japanese koto, he has taken what he calls a "middle-way" avoiding both jazz-rock fusion and atonal free jazz.
"Some people like Herbie Hancock and Joe Zawinul did interesting things with the synthesizer, but it wasn't for me. My instrument is the acoustic piano". He remains enamoured of great melodies, recording an album of Burt Bacharach songs.
Born in 1938, Tyner was raised in Philadelphia and began playing as a teenager. His mother was a beautician "she had three clients with pianos. I would alternate which one I went to practise - fortunately they never turned me down. Maybe they liked the hairdos they were getting." Tyner laughs at that memory "After about a year of that, when I was 13, my mother bought me a piano."
A strong early influence was Bud Powell, another Philadelphia pianist. In high school he had a rhythm and blues band. "I was lucky in that the teachers I had exposed me to everything from African music to Tchaikovsky."
Tyner says he is sometimes tempted by offers to work with a symphony orchestra, "but I think shorter compositions are more interesting to me. I'm pretty sure that Bach and Mozart were great improvisers - they were the jazz cats of their day and what they wrote down was like making a record. They would have done it differently at a different time."
At the age of 18, he became a Sunni Muslim, but now says that while he thinks spirituality is important, he is not a strong follower of any religion: "Being a Muslim was part of an exploration. But now I think if you take anything like that too seriously it weakens you rather makes you stronger."
As a band leader, does he ever lose his cool? "I like people to be comfortable. I don't like to handcuff people. I talked to a lot of people like Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson about leading a band. You have to learn to give respect and have that respect come back at you. It's reciprocal."
Only occasionally does a more fiery side emerge. "They have to listen, be sensitive and respond. And not think too much. Just jump in and then we can have a happy band and create great music."
McCoy Tyner Quartet dates: May 26th - Bath Festival, May 27th - Liverpool, May 29th - Gateshead, May 30th/31st - Ronnie Scott's
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/05/2008
Arguably the greatest jazz pianist alive, McCoy Tyner is about to start a tour of the UK. He talks to Peter Culshaw
Jazz pianist McCoy Tyner is discussing the concept of cool in his favourite Starbucks, close to his apartment in midtown Manhattan.
The greatest jazz pianist alive: McCoy Tyner
"There's a type of cool that is very superficial, narcissistic. Then there's a deeper cool, about accepting who you are, and keeping a kind of balance no matter what happens." Miles Davis, he suggests, had a little too much of the former - Tyner's ideal is Duke Ellington "The man had true elegance in how he presented himself and his music".
Tyner is arguably the greatest jazz pianist alive, and like Ellington has a rare elegance about him. He is dressed smartly in a suit and softly spoken to the point that he speaks in barely more than a whisper - so much so that in the clatter of the coffee shop it's sometimes hard to hear what he has to say. "Well, no-one ever called me a loud mouth", he laughs when I ask to sit right next to him.
His latest album, entitled Quartet, has him collaborating with revered tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, who will be accompanying him on his current UK tour, which begins this Monday, May 26, at the Bath festival. The album features reworkings of some his best known numbers like "For All We Know", the graceful "Search For Peace" and the upbeat "Blues On the Corner" from the 1967 album that launched his solo career, The Real McCoy.
The album is "maybe my 80th, I'm really not sure," says Tyner. It's full of colour and vigour with his trademark percussive piano style, with its emphatic, attacking bass and refined, virtuosic right hand. While full of energy, the album shows that Tyner, now 71, is still at the top of his game.
If it doesn't sound desperately original, that's because he has so many imitators: "I do listen to discs and think the piano sounds like me, and I'm honoured by that. But I wanted to find myself musically. The great guys I admired growing up always sounded like themselves and no-one else."
The return to a quartet line-up recalls what remains McCoy Tyner's most celebrated period in the early 60s as a member of John Coltrane's quartet. The band recorded such classics as A Love Supreme and My Favourite Things. Tyner both shaped the music and was influenced by Coltrane "actually the thing that really impressed me about John was his diligence, he was always practising, never satisfied. He knew what he wanted, even if he didn't always know how to get there. He was like a scientist in a laboratory. He was also like a big brother to me. I was a very lucky guy to know him."
After leaving Coltrane's band in 1965 when Coltrane went increasingly avant-garde, Tyner had a couple of years in the wilderness "I learnt some survival skills - but it was meant to be. I needed some time to find my voice." Since then, while he has experimented with different sized bands and different sounds, including playing the harpsichord and the Japanese koto, he has taken what he calls a "middle-way" avoiding both jazz-rock fusion and atonal free jazz.
"Some people like Herbie Hancock and Joe Zawinul did interesting things with the synthesizer, but it wasn't for me. My instrument is the acoustic piano". He remains enamoured of great melodies, recording an album of Burt Bacharach songs.
Born in 1938, Tyner was raised in Philadelphia and began playing as a teenager. His mother was a beautician "she had three clients with pianos. I would alternate which one I went to practise - fortunately they never turned me down. Maybe they liked the hairdos they were getting." Tyner laughs at that memory "After about a year of that, when I was 13, my mother bought me a piano."
A strong early influence was Bud Powell, another Philadelphia pianist. In high school he had a rhythm and blues band. "I was lucky in that the teachers I had exposed me to everything from African music to Tchaikovsky."
Tyner says he is sometimes tempted by offers to work with a symphony orchestra, "but I think shorter compositions are more interesting to me. I'm pretty sure that Bach and Mozart were great improvisers - they were the jazz cats of their day and what they wrote down was like making a record. They would have done it differently at a different time."
At the age of 18, he became a Sunni Muslim, but now says that while he thinks spirituality is important, he is not a strong follower of any religion: "Being a Muslim was part of an exploration. But now I think if you take anything like that too seriously it weakens you rather makes you stronger."
As a band leader, does he ever lose his cool? "I like people to be comfortable. I don't like to handcuff people. I talked to a lot of people like Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson about leading a band. You have to learn to give respect and have that respect come back at you. It's reciprocal."
Only occasionally does a more fiery side emerge. "They have to listen, be sensitive and respond. And not think too much. Just jump in and then we can have a happy band and create great music."
McCoy Tyner Quartet dates: May 26th - Bath Festival, May 27th - Liverpool, May 29th - Gateshead, May 30th/31st - Ronnie Scott's
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